WITH THE WORLD’S GREAT TRAVELLERS

BY CHARLES MORRIS
AND OLIVER H. G. LEIGH

Vol. I

THE PRODIGAL’S RETURN

Painting by Spada

CONTENTS.

PREFACE.

Next to actual travel, the reading of first-class travel stories by men and women of genius is the finest aid to the broadening of views and enlargement of useful knowledge of men and the world’s ways. It is the highest form of intellectual recreation, with the advantage over fiction-reading of satisfying the wholesome desire for facts. With all our modern enthusiasm for long journeys and foreign travel, now so easy of accomplishment, we see but very little of the great world. The fact that ocean voyages are now called mere “trips” has not made us over-familiar with even our own kinsfolk in our new dependencies. Foreign peoples and lands are still strange to us. Tropic and Arctic lands are as far apart in condition as ever; Europe differs from Asia, America from Africa, as markedly as ever. Man still presents every grade of development, from the lowest savagery to the highest civilization, and our interest in the marvels of nature and art, the variety of plant and animal life, and the widely varied habits and conditions, modes of thought and action, of mankind, is in no danger of losing its zest.

These considerations have guided us in our endeavor to tell the story of the world, alike of its familiar and unfamiliar localities, as displayed in the narratives of those who have seen its every part. Special interest attaches to the stories of those travellers who first gazed upon the wonders and observed the inhabitants of previously unknown lands, and whose descriptions are therefore those of discoverers.

One indisputable advantage belongs to this work over the average record of travel: the reader is not tied down to the perusal of a one-man book. He has the privilege of calling at pleasure upon any one of these eminent travellers to recount his or her exploit, with the certainty of finding they are all in their happiest vein and tell their best stories.

The adventures and discoveries here described are gathered from the four quarters of the globe, and include the famous stories of men no longer living, as well as those of present activity. Many of the articles were formerly published in the exhaustive work entitled, “The World’s Library of Literature, History and Travel” [The J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia].

For the rich variety and quality of our material we are indebted to many travellers of note, and to the courtesy of numerous publishers and authors. Among these it is desired to acknowledge particularly indebtedness to the following publishers and works: To Harper and Brothers, for selections from Stanley’s “Through the Dark Continent,” Du Chaillu’s “Equatorial Africa,” Prime’s “Tent-Life in the Holy Land,” Orton’s “The Andes and the Amazon,” and Browne’s “An American Family in Germany.” To Charles Scribner’s Sons: Stanley’s “In Darkest Africa,” Field’s “The Greek Islands,” and Schley’s “The Rescue of Greely.” To G. P. Putnam’s Sons: De Amicis’s “Holland and its People,” Taylor’s “Lands of the Saracens,” and Brace’s “The New West.” To Houghton, Mifflin and Co.: Melville’s “In the Lena Delta,” and Hawthorne’s “Our Old Home.” To Roberts Brothers: Hunt’s “Bits of Travel at Home.” To H. C. Coates and Co.: Leonowen’s “Life and Travel in India.” Equal tribute is offered to the authors who have courteously permitted the use of their material, and in these acknowledgments we include Charles Morris, editor of the above work, and Oliver H. G. Leigh, whose pen has won honors in various fields, for their special contributions to this edition.

WITH THE WORLD’S
GREAT TRAVELLERS.

NEW DEPENDENCIES OF THE UNITED STATES.

OLIVER H. G LEIGH.

[The trend of events makes it certain that our geographical knowledge is going to be enlarged by personal investigation. The boom of Dewey’s big guns sent us to our school-books with mixed feelings as to the practical value of much of our alleged learning. The world suddenly broadened as we gazed in surprise. Hawaii invited itself into the circle of new relations. The near West Indies and the remote Philippines craved peculiar attentions. Whether moved by commercial zeal, official duty or the profitable curiosity of pleasure or scientific investigation, he is in the highest sense a patriotic benefactor of his own country and the land he visits, who devotes his energies to making Americans more intimately acquainted with the communities now linked with the most powerful of nations.]

The scope of holiday travel, or tours of profitable investigation, has been widely extended by the new relationship between the United States and Hawaii, now included in its possessions, and the former Spanish islands over which it exercises a kindly protectorate. Through the usual channels public sentiment is being formed upon the resources and responsibilities of the new dependencies. Many will be attracted to Cuba, Porto Rico, Hawaii, and even to the remote Philippines, by considerations of a practical kind. No truer patriotic motive can inspire the American traveller than the desire to develop the natural resources, and, by consequence, the social welfare of a dependent community Whether bent on business, pleasure, or official duty in the service of the United States the prospective voyager, and the friends he leaves behind him, will profit by these gatherings from the impressions and experiences of former travellers.

The approach to Havana at daybreak overwhelms the senses with the gorgeous beauties of the sky and landscape. Foul as the harbor may be with city drainage it seems a silvery lake encircled with the charms of Paradise and over-arched with indescribable glories of celestial forms and hues and ever-changing witcheries wrought by the frolicsome sun in his ecstasy of morning release. Strange that where nature most lavishes her wealth of charms and favors, the listlessness of perverse man responds in ungrateful contrasts rather than in harmonies. Havana has the interest of age, with the drawbacks incident to hereditary indifference to progressive change. As in all important cities there are sharp contrasts in its quarters. With long avenues of stately mansions, marble-like and colonnaded, and exquisitely designed courtyards, there are unpaved thoroughfares with an open sewer in the mid-roadway, flanked by tenement houses with a family in each room. Most of Havana’s two hundred thousand citizens live in one-story buildings, lacking conveniences which the poorest American considers necessities. The older streets are mere alleys, about twenty feet wide, of which the sidewalks take up seven. Light and ample ventilation are obtained by grated window-openings without frames or glass. The dwellings and public buildings throughout Cuba are planned to give free passage to every zephyr that wafts relief from the oppressive heat. This is not because the thermometer mounts much higher than it does in the United States, for it never touches the records of our great cities, where a hundred in the shade is not unknown. From 80 to 50 degrees is the year’s average, and it is this steady continuance of warmth that tries strength and temper.

In the better districts of Havana the driveways are twenty-three feet and the sidewalks about ten feet wide. Politeness keeps native and foreign men hopping up and down the foot deep curb to allow ladies a fair share of elbow-room on the pavements. Your guest-chamber in a well-to-do family residence has probably a window twenty by eight feet, sashless, but with several lace curtains and shutters to suit the weather. The walls are tinted with the Spaniard’s eye for rich color display, the massive furniture is solid carved old mahogany, and the graceful mosquito curtains suggest experiences better left untold. House-rent is high, owing to the heavy taxation, which will doubtless be modified after American administration has put the city in a sanitary condition. Flour used to cost the poorer classes from two to three times its price in the United States.

Before we leave the capital for the interior we must note two or three of the time-mellowed edifices, which give the flavor of old-world mediævalism to the island. The gloomy Morro Castle is familiar in the chronicles of the war. It stands guard at the water-gate of the city, a grim-visaged dungeon that echoes with the despairing groans of more victims of cruel oppression than can ever be counted. A more cheerful landmark is the old Cathedral, looking as if it dates further back than 1724, cooped up in its crowded quarter. Here rest the ashes of Columbus, say the faithful, and they are probably right. He died in Spain May 20, 1506. In 1856, his bones were brought to San Domingo and from there were transferred in January, 1796, to this Cathedral, where they rest in the wall behind the bust and tablet to his memory. The elaborate monument under the dome is a splendid work of art. Four life-size sculptured ecclesiastics bear a sarcophagus on their shoulders. There is also a supposed portrait bust on a mural tablet.

The Spanish element in the city is popularly said to be an exaggeration of the old country quality. The Tacon theatre holds three thousand people. Cafés and restaurants abound, and never lack customers. Some day Havana may be transformed into a nearer Paris, with a larger American colony than haunts the dearer city across the sea. Cuba has nearly the same area as England. The Province of Havana has a population of 452,000, of whom 107,500 are black. Large tracts of the island have not yet been explored. The long years of intermittent battling between the Cubans and Spaniards have grievously hindered progress in all directions. Nature is bountiful beyond belief, yet her overtures have been scorned, partly because of native inertia, but mainly through dread of loss. Both sides have been guilty of laying waste vast areas of cultivated land, ruining its husbandmen, capitalists and laborers alike. The millennium bids fair to come before long. Peace is restoring confidence. The reign of justice will bring capital and labor back to the soil and tempt American migration to the cities and towns, where life can be lived so enjoyably by those who bring modern methods and ideas to bear in the task of converting a man-made wilderness into an alluring paradise. Not long ago an American bought seventy acres of ground in Trinidad valley, which he cleared and planted at a cost of $3,070 for the first year. The second year’s cultivation cost $1,120. He made it a banana orchard. At the end of the second year he had realized $30,680 net profit by the sale of his crop of 54,000 bunches.

Havana has the cosmopolitan air. Clubs, cafés, and entertainments abound and flourish. Its suburbs and nearby towns afford all the allurements the modern city-man seeks in country life. The rural charms of Marianao are unsurpassed in any land. Ornately simple architecture marks the columned houses of its best street. Around it are the cosy cottages in their luxuriant gardens, and beyond these the open country, a veritable Eden of foliage, flowers and fruit. In one spot a famous old banyan tree has thrown out its limbs, thrusting them deep into the soil till they have sprouted and spread over a five-acre field.

As we traverse the garden landscape in any settled part of the island, and in Porto Rico, we note the habits of the rustic native in his interesting simplicity. Poor enough in all conscience, but wonderfully contented with his crust of bread, his cigarette, the family pig, bananas for the pickaninnies’ staple fare, and the frequent sips of rum which are to the West Indian laborer what beefsteak is to the American toiler. He is by no means a drunkard, and if he lacks book-learning he excels in some civic virtues of the homelier kind, and is not extravagant in his tailor-bills. The children’s costume is usually that of Eve before the fall, and the apparel of a goodly family might be bought for the price of a dude’s red vest.

Cock-fighting is the favorite native sport. It is encountered at any hour, anywhere. There are other sports, such as boar hunts, spearing fish, not to mention that of killing tarantulas, sand-flies, land-crabs, and the gentle crocodile. The thousand miles of steam railway in Cuba are unevenly distributed. From Havana the trip through Pinar del Rio gives an astounding revelation of the wealth of forest and soil and mines. Devastated as so much of this country was during the long years of dragging war, its charms of scenery and possibilities of development will work its speedy salvation. A single acre of choice land has produced $3,000 worth of tobacco.

Two crops of corn and two of strawberries grow each year, vegetables and many fruits are superabundant, yet wheat and flour are imported, and cotton, besides other important staples, can be successfully cultivated.

Journeying to the charming Isle of Pines, and then south and east through Matanzas, Santa Clara, and Puerto Principe to Santiago, there is the same invitation of Nature to come and enjoy all that makes earth lovely. The island is dotted with towns large and small having much the same characteristics as Havana. Her virgin forests have some of the richest woods known to commerce. Her hills hold stores of iron, copper, coal and other minerals. Her soil is ready to yield many-fold to the courageous cultivator. When the swords have been turned into plough-shares and the spears to pruning-hooks, there will come a new day for the native Cuban. He will feel himself liberated from the hindering rancors and jealousies, inevitable in the light of recent history, which alone now stand between his beautiful island and the prosperity that hovers, waiting his encouragement to alight. Then the traveller will return with reports of Havana rejuvenated, her harbor dredged and purified, her highways paved, homes made healthy and the whole island lifted to the higher and happier plane that will give the Pearl of the Antilles its rightful setting among the other gems of God’s earth.

MORRO CASTLE, HAVANA

Porto Rico, the “rich port,” so named by Columbus, came gladly under the American flag. Its population of about 900,000 has had a sorry time for three hundred years. They have been steeped in spiritless poverty from first to last, so used to the oppressor’s yoke that ambition seems to have been crushed. Yet their island is an earthly paradise, save for its rain-storms and occasional droughts. It is rich in undeveloped mineral deposits and splendid forests. Nature has helped to discourage native effort by providing the means of sustenance over-lavishly, in one sense. The people scattered through the interior find everything ready grown to hand. The bulk of the population throng the shore areas and are as listlessly happy with the minimum of life’s necessaries as are the animals.

Spain has left its mark upon the island, a mark representing a civilization not to be sneered at, though not of the modern stamp. Range through the island’s lovely valleys, struggle up its mountain slopes to isolated hamlets where primitive life lingers in all its bewildering unloveliness; thread the rude thoroughfare of its picturesque towns, and you will come upon replicas of the familiar Spanish church, the symbol and centre of an ever potent influence for good. With all its faults, this local haven of peace and good cheer has tempered the lot of generations that never fully realized the hopelessness of their fate. A venerable church peeping out of a leafy glade gives a touch of poetic grace to the landscape. It is something, perhaps, though not very much, that sectarian animosities do not embitter the easy minds of these peasants, who dwell together in enviable fraternity.

Porto Rico is only one of some thirteen hundred islands in the West Indies that are now in the American fold. It has several large towns that will intensely interest the traveller. San Juan, with twenty-five thousand inhabitants, is the principal city. A fine old military road runs from it across the mountains to Ponce, on the south shore. It is twenty feet wide, hard and dustless, winds along through eighty miles of scenery unsurpassed in any country, though the island is only forty miles directly across.

Every considerable town has its cathedral. That at Sabana Grande was built in 1610. Some of them have gorgeous altars and precious paintings. In one little church the figure of the Blessed Virgin is of pure gold. Another has an altar of silver.

The retail stores in the cities make little or no front display. The store is virtually a sample room, with extensive warehouses in the rear. Town life is, in its way, Parisian. The cathedral stands in a square or park, the promenade and gossiping ground for both sexes. The midday siesta is the rule, a two hours’ cessation from the round of toil. The evenings are given to music and dancing, or the merry chatter of groups as they enjoy the strains of the band. The lacy mantilla adds grace to the generally captivating beauty of the women, as they cunningly drape it over their heads to take the place of hats. The palms and cocoa-nut trees, the clusters of coffee-trees, the sugar-cane, the groves of oranges, lemons, bananas, and other fruits lend great beauty to the landscape. Tobacco is largely cultivated, with plenty of inducements for a more systematic treatment of a commodity which ought greatly to increase the wealth of the island.

Since it has come under American influence many improvements have been effected. The cities are treated to the modern system of drainage, and roads have been constructed which will make traffic between the towns easier and thus encourage trade.

Exceptionally fierce hurricanes and floods wrought havoc with many plantations soon after the war. Other misfortunes plunged the always poor laboring class into absolute starvation, many of the well-to-do were ruined, and business has been severely hampered by questions of tariff arising out of the change in political status. The United States government has done much and will continue its kindly endeavors to ameliorate the condition of these people. With the speedy return of good times there ought to be a growing stream of pleasure as well as business traffic to an island so exceptionally rich in the natural features which give fresh delight to the travelled eye and unfold a new world of charm to the fortunate ones who go abroad for the first time.

Honolulu, the capital of the Hawaiian group, has long been an American city in all but name. The geographical position of the islands destined them to come within the pale of our civilization. Within a century the natives have been transformed from a state of animalism into a self-respecting, progressive people. While the aborigines have been rapidly dying out there has been a steady influx of new blood from various sources. The population is about 120,000, immigrants from Japan and Portugal forming a considerable proportion of the laboring class. Chinese immigration has been restricted.

The traveller might almost imagine himself in some New England or Pennsylvania town as he drives through the streets of Honolulu. The capital is laid out on the American plan, the churches and houses might have been transplanted by a cyclone, and the very attire of the people in general keeps up the illusion of being at home from home. The palace of the last king and queen bears as little relation to the hut of their great predecessor, Kamehameha the First, as do the New York tailor-made suits and dresses of the citizens of Honolulu to the scanty loin-cloth which their grandparents considered the height of Sandwich Islands fashion.

More and more will these lovely isles become the pleasure-grounds for our people and for all world-tourists. The important practical value of their annexation will be better understood if it ever becomes necessary to back up the essential principle of the Monroe Doctrine against foreign foes. As a growing metropolis Honolulu has charms of its own independent of the ideal climate and luxuriant flora of the twelve islands.

The narratives of the first travellers to Owhyee, as they styled it, glowed with descriptions of the voluptuous charms of the natives, whose life was a round of pleasure, untempered by the wholesome necessity for hard toil. It was a lotos land for all who sojourned there. The harmful consequences of unwholesome ease are not yet eradicated. Christianity has achieved almost miraculous triumphs, and the conditions of modern life in crowded communities are helping to harden the native temperament. The leper colony in Molokai is one of several sad sights which are, perhaps, better left unseen. Also the clandestine Saturnalia still kept up on the old lines, with some winking or dozing on the part of natives in authority.

Trips can be made to the surrounding islands, famous for their volcanic mountains and tropical verdure. The largest active crater in the world is that of Kilauea, being nine miles in circumference, with vertical sides about one thousand feet deep and at the bottom a lake of molten lava, boiling furiously in some parts and throwing off fibres like spun silk which float in the air. These craters are apt to break into activity without warning.

City life in Honolulu, as already remarked, can almost delude a Southerner into fancying himself at home. It is quite cosmopolitan in its degree. There are well-equipped hotels, an English library, street railways, electric lights, telephones, insurance offices, colonies and clubs of American and British lawyers, business men, physicians and journalists. Modern progress is strikingly impressed on the visitor who draws his own picture of the primitive semi-savages he expects to see, when he hears the familiar hum of mills and factories, the roar and pounding noises of foundries, and the imposing array of wharves and vessels. Hawaii is a natural hub of the wheel of world-traffic. From its ports there is a large and fast-growing steamship trade with the principal commercial centres all over the globe. We shall pass from Honolulu round to the Philippines in the easiest fashion. One is surprised at the number of Chinese and Japanese laborers in Hawaii, some of whom have prospered and own large business establishments. The foreign element in the labor field has been a source of mild trouble but is now in a fair way to solve itself. A gratifying feature is the public school system. Everywhere are centres of light and learning, promising a grand future for the island population. The abundant yield of rice, sugar, coffee, bananas, and other foodstuffs is mostly bought for the American people.

The pleasures and pains of the voyage to the Philippines have been the subject of too many public letters since the war to need re-telling. The two thousand islands which form the little-known archipelago are the homes of a number of mixed tribes, with whom the traveller will not crave intimate acquaintance for some time. In Luzon, the chief island, we may feel fairly at home, now that its all but pathless wilds, as well as its long-settled towns and hamlets, are sprinkled with American soldiers. In time, doubtless, scientific exploration will approximately fix the value of the mineral and arable fields of the archipelago. Until knowledge increases in this direction there will not be much inducement to roam among peoples with questionable manners, strange religions and outlandish dialects. The Tagal folk has reached, as regards the more favored class, a high degree of civilization. The Malay blood has peculiarities of its own. Under long-continued Spanish rule the Luzon native has developed intellectually and nurtured an ambition for self-government. This half-amicable, half-hostile relationship between the Spanish friars, who have been the spiritual, and perhaps still more the civic, trainers and masters of the natives, is a most interesting study for the newly arrived visitor.

Landing at Manila, the commercial centre and capital of the islands, we find ourselves in a city blending the characteristics of an old-fashioned Spanish town with the mild business air of a third-rate western port. The buildings speak of the tropical perils to be encountered. Dewey’s bombardment was more generous than the earthquakes and gales that smote the Cathedral. These visitations come oftener than those of angels. Houses are built low and massively on the ground floor, to insure that a one-story home shall remain when the upstairs section flies away. Terrific gales come unannounced and life is temporarily suspended until it is possible to swim into the streets and rake in the flotsam and jetsam that once lodged within your walls. Periodical rains lend variety to the novice’s experience. They descend in Niagaras, giving free and wholesome baths to the many who need them and to those who need them not, and give the mud lanes that serve for streets a timely cleaning up. The rainfall record has shown as much as 114 inches in a year.

Your hotel will be the perfection of cleanliness, but the window openings are vast and glass-panes are unknown. The mahogany bedstead is bedless, a mat of woven cane strips, bare of everything that can encourage warmth or harbor little neighbors, but winged visitors float in to remind the sleeper he is not in the Waldorf-Astoria, and then depart, perhaps. By day life can be very enjoyable. Churches, which are largely art-galleries also, fine squares and promenades, fashionable drives, town clubs and country clubs, shared by the American, English, and German business men, these and other aids to happiness flourish in Manila and suburbs.

The general aspect of Philippine scenery to the untutored eye of a stranger resembles the tropical views already described, allowance being made for differing conditions. When the fortunes of war brought the islands within our ken the principal trade was divided between Spain and outside countries. The treaty of 1898 brought the archipelago into closer trade relations, with mutual advantages. When Aguinaldo, the Tagal leader, declared his allegiance to the United States, the fact assured the establishment of a friendly arrangement which in time will bring high prosperity to the islands and civilization to their people. The two hundred thousand who live in and around Manila are mainly Christians.

Generally the natives with whom we are in closest contact are a civil and good-tempered people. Picturesque in costume, or the lack of it, they share with the scenery around the characteristic freedom from commonplace. Prolonged familiarity with modern methods of culture will take much of the charm out of life in the Philippines, replacing it, no doubt, with the practical methods which conduce to progress. A voyage to these distant islands affords a rare opportunity to trace the process of evolution from the simple and natural to the complex machinery which is grinding organized society into drab-tinted duplications of a rather uninteresting original.

WINTER AND SUMMER IN NEW ENGLAND.

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

[The “Society in America” and the “Retrospect of Western Travel,” by Harriet Martineau, contain many interesting pictures of life and scenery in the United States. Of the descriptive passages of the latter work we select that detailing her experience of winter weather in Boston, which she seems to have looked upon with true English eyes, and not with the vision of one “to the manner born.”]

I believe no one attempts to praise the climate of New England. The very low average of health there, the prevalence of consumption and of decay of the teeth, are evidences of an unwholesome climate which I believe are universally received as such. The mortality among children throughout the whole country is a dark feature of life in the United States.... Wherever we went in the North we heard of the “lung fever” as a common complaint, and children seemed to be as liable to it as grown persons.

The climate is doubtless chiefly to blame for all this, and I do not see how any degree of care could obviate much of the evil. The children must be kept warm within-doors; and the only way of affording them the range of the house is by warming the whole, from the cellar to the garret, by means of a furnace in the hall. This makes all comfortable within; but, then, the risk of going out is very great. There is far less fog and damp than in England, and the perfectly calm, sunny days of midwinter are endurable; but the least breath of wind seems to chill one’s very life. I had no idea what the suffering from extreme cold amounted to till one day, in Boston, I walked the length of the city and back again in a wind, with the thermometer seven degrees and a half below zero. I had been warned of the cold, but was anxious to keep an appointment to attend a meeting. We put on all the merinoes and furs we could muster, but we were insensible of them from the moment the wind reached us. My muff seemed to be made of ice; I almost fancied I should have been warmer without it. We managed getting to the meeting pretty well, the stock of warmth we had brought out with us lasting till then. But we set out cold on our return, and by the time I got home I did not very well know where I was and what I was about. The stupefaction from cold is particularly disagreeable, the sense of pain remaining through it, and I determined not to expose myself to it again. All this must be dangerous to children; and if, to avoid it, they are shut up through the winter, there remains the danger of encountering the ungenial spring....

Every season, however, has its peculiar pleasures, and in the retrospect these shine out brightly, while the evils disappear.

On a December morning you are awakened by the domestic scraping at your hearth. Your anthracite fire has been in all night; and now the ashes are carried away, more coal is put on, and the blower hides the kindly red from you for a time. In half an hour the fire is intense, though, at the other end of the room, everything you touch seems to blister your fingers with cold. If you happen to turn up a corner of the carpet with your foot, it gives out a flash, and your hair crackles as you brush it. Breakfast is always hot, be the weather what it may. The coffee is scalding, and the buckwheat cakes steam when the cover is taken off. Your host’s little boy asks whether he may go coasting to-day, and his sisters tell you what days the schools will all go sleighing. You may see boys coasting on Boston Common all the winter day through, and too many in the streets, where it is not so safe.

To coast is to ride on a board down a frozen slope, and many children do this in the steep streets which lead down to the Common, as well as on the snowy slopes within the enclosure where no carriages go. Some sit on their heels on the board, some on their crossed legs. Some strike their legs out, put their arms akimbo, and so assume an air of defiance amid their velocity. Others prefer lying on their stomachs, and so going headforemost, an attitude whose comfort I could never enter into. Coasting is a wholesome exercise for hardy boys. Of course, they have to walk up the ascent, carrying their boards between every feat of coasting; and this affords them more exercise than they are at all aware of taking.

As for the sleighing, I heard much more than I experienced of its charms. No doubt early association has something to do with the American fondness for this mode of locomotion, and much of the affection which is borne to music, dancing, supping, and all kinds of frolic is transferred to the vehicle in which the frolicking parties are transported. It must be so, I think, or no one would be found to prefer a carriage on runners to a carriage on wheels, except on an untrodden expanse of snow. On a perfectly level and crisp surface I can fancy the smooth, rapid motion to be exceedingly pleasant; but such surfaces are rare in the neighborhood of populous cities. The uncertain, rough motion in streets hillocky with snow, or on roads consisting for the season of a ridge of snow with holes in it, is disagreeable and provocative of headache. I am no rule for others as to liking the bells; but to me their incessant jangle was a great annoyance. Add to this the sitting, without exercise, in a wind caused by the rapidity of the motion, and the list of désagrémens is complete. I do not know the author of a description of sleighing which was quoted to me, but I admire it for its fidelity. “Do you want to know what sleighing is like? You can soon try. Set your chair on a spring-board out on the porch on Christmas-day; put your feet in a pailful of powdered ice; have somebody to jingle a bell in one ear, and somebody else to blow into the other with the bellows, and you will have an exact idea of sleighing.”

[This quotation would appear to be a variant of Dr. Franklin’s recipe for sleighing. As for Miss Martineau’s experience “behind the bells,” it seems to have been very unfortunate.]

If the morning be fine, you have calls to make, or shopping to do, or some meeting to attend. If the streets be coated with ice, you put on your India-rubber shoes—unsoled—to guard you from slipping. If not, you are pretty sure to measure your length on the pavement before your own door. Some of the handsomest houses in Boston, those which boast the finest flights of steps, have planks laid on the steps during the season of frost, the wood being less slippery than stone. If, as sometimes happens, a warm wind should be suddenly breathing over the snow, you go back to change your shoes, India-rubbers being as slippery in wet as leather soles are on ice. [It must be borne in mind that the writer is speaking of the rubber shoes of sixty years ago.] Nothing is seen in England like the streets of Boston and New York at the end of the season, while the thaw is proceeding. The area of the street had been so raised that passengers could look over the blinds of your ground-floor rooms; when the sidewalks become full of holes and puddles they are cleared, and the passengers are reduced to their proper level; but the middle of the street remains exalted, and the carriages drive along a ridge. Of course, this soon becomes too dangerous, and for a season ladies and gentlemen walk; carts tumble, slip, and slide, and get on as they can; while the mass, now dirty, not only with thaw, but with quantities of refuse vegetables, sweepings of the poor people’s houses, and other rubbish which it was difficult to know what to do with while every place was frozen up, daily sinks and dissolves into a composite mud. It was in New York and some of the inferior streets of Boston that I saw this process in its completeness.

If the morning drives are extended beyond the city there is much to delight the eye. The trees are cased in ice; and when the sun shines out suddenly the whole scene looks like one diffused rainbow, dressed in a brilliancy which can hardly be conceived of in England. On days less bright, the blue harbor spreads in strong contrast with the sheeted snow which extends to its very brink....

The skysights of the colder regions of the United States are resplendent in winter. I saw more of the aurora borealis, more falling stars and other meteors, during my stay in New England than in the whole course of my life before. Every one knows that splendid and mysterious exhibitions have taken place in all the Novembers of the last four years, furnishing interest and business to the astronomical world. The most remarkable exhibitions were in the Novembers of 1833 and 1835, the last of which I saw....

On the 17th of November in question, that of 1835, I was staying in the house of one of the professors of Harvard University at Cambridge. The professor and his son John came in from a lecture at nine o’clock, and told us that it was nearly as light as day, though there was no moon. The sky presented as yet no remarkable appearance, but the fact set us telling stories of skysights. A venerable professor told us of a blood-red heaven which shone down on a night of the year 1789, when an old lady interpreted the whole French Revolution from what she saw. None of us had any call to prophesying this night. John looked out from time to time while we were about the piano, but our singing had come to a conclusion before he brought us news of a very strange sky. It was now near eleven. We put cloaks and shawls over our heads, and hurried into the garden. It was a mild night, and about as light as with half a moon. There was a beautiful rose-colored flush across the entire heavens, from southeast to northwest. This was every moment brightening, contracting in length, and dilating in breadth.

My host ran off without his hat to call the Natural History professor. On the way he passed a gentleman who was trudging along, pondering the ground. “A remarkable night, sir,” cried my host. “Sir! how, sir?” replied the pedestrian. “Why, look above your head!” The startled walker ran back to the house he had left to make everybody gaze. There was some debate about ringing the college-bell, but it was agreed that it would cause too much alarm.

The Natural Philosophy professor came forth in curious trim, and his household and ours joined in the road. One lady was in her nightcap, another with a handkerchief tied over her head, while we were cowled in cloaks. The sky was now resplendent. It was like a blood-red dome, a good deal pointed. Streams of a greenish-white light radiated from the centre in all directions. The colors were so deep, especially the red, as to give an opaque appearance to the canopy, and as Orion and the Pleiades and many more stars could be distinctly seen, the whole looked like a vast dome inlaid with constellations. These skysights make one shiver, so new are they, so splendid, so mysterious. We saw the heavens grow pale, and before midnight believed that the mighty show was over; but we had the mortification of hearing afterwards that at one o’clock it was brighter than ever, and as light as day.

Such are some of the wintry characteristics of New England.

If I lived in Massachusetts, my residence during the hot months should be beside one of its ponds. These ponds are a peculiarity in New England scenery very striking to the traveller. Geologists tell us of the time when the valleys were chains of lakes; and in many parts the eye of the observer would detect this without the aid of science. There are many fields and clusters of fields of remarkable fertility, lying in basins, the sides of which have much the appearance of the greener and smoother of the dykes of Holland. These suggest the idea of their having been ponds at the first glance. Many remain filled with clear water, the prettiest meres in the world. A cottage on Jamaica Pond, for instance, within an easy ride of Boston, is a luxurious summer abode. I know of one unequalled in its attractions, with its flower-garden, its lawn, with banks shelving down to the mere,—banks dark with nestling pines, from under whose shade the bright track of the moon may be seen, lying cool on the rippling waters. A boat is moored in the cove at hand. The cottage itself is built for coolness, and the broad piazza is draperied with vines, which keep out the sun from the shaded parlor.

WASHINGTON ELM, CAMBRIDGE

The way to make the most of a summer’s day in a place like this is to rise at four, mount your horse and ride through the lanes for two hours, finding breakfast ready on your return. If you do not ride, you slip down to the bathing-house on the creek; and, once having closed the door, have the shallow water completely to yourself, carefully avoiding going beyond the deep-water mark, where no one knows how deep the mere may be. After breakfast you should dress your flowers, before those you gather have quite lost the morning dew. The business of the day, be it what it may, housekeeping, study, teaching, authorship, or charity, will occupy you till dinner at two. You have your dessert carried into the piazza, where, catching glimpses of the mere through the wood on the banks, your watermelon tastes cooler than within, and you have a better chance of a visit from a pair of humming-birds.

You retire to your room, all shaded with green blinds, lie down with a book in your hands, and sleep soundly for two hours at least. When you wake and look out, the shadows are lengthening on the lawn, and the hot haze has melted away. You hear a carriage behind the fence, and conclude that friends from the city are coming to spend the evening with you. They sit within till after tea, telling you that you are living in the sweetest place in the world. When the sun sets you all walk out, dispersing in the shrubbery or on the banks. When the moon shows herself above the opposite woods, the merry voices of the young people are heard from the cove, where the boys are getting out the boat. You stand, with a companion or two, under the pines, watching the progress of the skiff and the receding splash of the oars. If you have any one, as I had, to sing German popular songs to you, the enchantment is all the greater. You are capriciously lighted home by fireflies, and there is your table covered with fruit and iced lemonade. When your friends have left you you would fain forget it is time to rest, and your last act before you sleep is to look out once more from your balcony upon the silvery mere and moonlit lawn.